


The Right Me for You

by Frangipanidownunder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 09:10:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10273349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frangipanidownunder/pseuds/Frangipanidownunder
Summary: Written for @leiascully‘s XFWritingChallenge: ForgivenessAngsty post Ep for Founder’s Mutation





	

It must have been the guttural roar of the wind through the trees that masked the sound of the car arriving. It must have been the flickering of the candles on the bench top that hid the flash of the headlights. It must have been the time of the day that left Mulder’s mind smudgy and billowing so that he didn’t register the knocking at the door.

It was 2 o’clock in the morning. A time when he often braved the depths of his memories, dug a trench around the black and white of the clear cut and allowed the murkiness to leach out to entertain the greyness of possibility. It was usually a time for reflection, a time for admonishment. A time for forgiveness.

It was most definitely not a time that Scully called.

She stood at the screen door, hugging herself. She would have hated his initial reaction – that she looked fragile, but that’s the word his brain supplied. He ushered her through, his heart pulsing as she walked to the living room and sat on the couch. Over their years together, he’d collected these moments in his mind, where she let herself be seen without her armour. He was humbled each and every time. Perhaps especially more so now. Now that she was no longer here every day. Now that she had plenty of time to reconstruct the walls.

‘I couldn’t sleep.’ She picked at a thread on the cushion on her lap. She was looking at the small table that held a lamp, an old watch he’d found in a suit pocket, a pile of coins, a sticky coffee ring. There used to be photo frames. Miniature ones. Faces captured in bad lights.

He sat in the chair opposite. ‘The last case, Scully. It was hard.’

‘It’s not the case, Mulder.’ She looked up briefly and he saw the dark circles under her eyes. He could see the mole above her lip in the glow of the lamplight. He loved that mole. He loved that she hid it for so long, but that she knew that he knew about it. It was a part of her armour. He understood that the foundation and the powder that covered it were as necessary as the heels and the suits and the badge and the weapon.

‘It’s never the case,’ she said, rubbing her forehead. Her voice was sluggish, cracked. ‘It’s just me, my…’

He leant forward, elbows on knees. ‘Your what?’

She opened her mouth, but only let out a frustrated sigh. ‘What were you doing awake, Mulder? It’s 2.30 in the morning and I didn’t wake you.’

He shrugged. ‘Those kids, Scully. Where are they? The casual disregard that Goldman had for the consequences of the work he was doing. Agnes and her baby, her desperation. It was a tough case. I just can’t unwind like I used to.’

‘You never could, Mulder. You were always wired on a case.’

‘But you used to be able to sleep anywhere, Scully. You would be able to file away the bad stuff along with your reports and get on with the next case. I’ve never met anyone with the ability to compartmentalise quite as well as you. It’s like your super power.’

She chuffed out a tired snort of laughter. ‘Maybe my super powers need a reboost. I haven’t been sleeping well since we started back on the job. Maybe they put something in the ID these days, some kind of upper to keep the older agents going.’

‘Are you sure about this? About your decision?’

‘I said there was no choice, Mulder. I meant it.’

‘But this case, those children. William…’

She tucked her legs under her to one side, pulling the hem of her skirt down and hugging the cushion to her middle. She picked up the watch, running the strap through her fingers. ‘We pulled the thread. It’s still unravelling.’

‘Should we have left it tangled, Scully?’

When she looked at him her eyes were wet. The tip of her nose pink. Her lips trembling as she licked them. ‘No.’ She shook her head so that her hair flew, catching across her face. She straightened it, tucked it behind her ear. Cleared her throat. ‘No, no. It’s something we needed to do.’

‘You know what I think, Scully? I think that we started pulling the thread a long time before this case. A long time before we rejoined the FBI. I think it was unravelling since he was born.’

She nodded. ‘And what happens when the thread is straight? When there’s nothing left to unspool? Do we get our answers, Mulder?’

His laugh was as bitter as her words. ‘I don’t think it works that way.’

The noise of the watch against the surface of the table seemed to hang between them so that when she spoke again her voice seemed disconnected, almost ethereal.

‘You said you had to put William behind you, when I asked you if you thought about him. How do you do that? How do you not carry him with you everywhere, every day? You say I compartmentalise better than anyone you know, but you have no idea how envious I am of your capacity to do that, Mulder.’

She let out a small sob.

He moved to sit next to her. She sunk against him, shuddering with the weight of her grief. ‘I’m sorry, Scully. I know it hurts. I saw you in that hospital with Mrs Goldman. I saw how what she said cut into you. I wish I could do something more, to take away the pain. But I think you need it. It’s a reminder. A way of making sure you don’t forget. It stabs you in the guts if you don’t nurture it for too long.’ He dropped a kiss on top of her head. ‘I think you need the pain. I know I do.’

The wind lifted the rafters with a series of rattling gusts. The window frames shook. A low howl filled the roof space. Mulder had woken earlier, surprised to find Scully still next to him, her face twisted against his chest. She stirred, rubbed her nose, pushed herself upright and groaned as her neck clunked with each sideways movement.

‘Coffee?’

‘Please.’

She took a quick shower and surprised him again when she returned to the kitchen wearing his bath robe.

‘I put your linen away, Scully.’

‘I know.’

‘You look good in mine, though.’

She looked down at herself and chuckled.

‘That’s another of your super powers, Scully. The ability to look better in my clothes than I do.’

‘I don’t think I could do your Armani suits justice, Mulder. You fill them out pretty good.’

‘Thank you,’ he laughed. ‘You wearing my shirts, though.’

She sipped on her coffee and he enjoyed watching her blush.

‘Are you feeling better, Scully?’

She shook her head. ‘No. But I think you’re right, Mulder. I think if I lose the pain, I lose too much. I’m afraid to not remember him, I’m afraid to not dream about him. I’m afraid that if I erase too much of him that I’ll erase myself too.’

‘When I said I’ve put it behind me, I didn’t mean that I’ve forgotten. I just meant that I’d put the guilt behind me. I’ve learned to accept the past and I’ve learned to accept that I can’t change it. You made me do that, Scully. When you left. You set me on that path.’ He put down his mug and gestured for her to come forward. She put her head on his chest. ‘I think you need to forgive yourself, Scully. I think it’s time.’

‘I’m not sure I’m ready for that.’

He kissed the side of her face. ‘Do you imagine being a family? With William?’

‘When I dare myself.’

‘In mine, we watch movies and eat popcorn, we climb trees and construct cubby houses out of blankets and build rocket ships, we talk about girls, we shave together.’

She pulled back and threaded her fingers through his. ‘In mine, I take him to school and I patch up his cuts and ice his bruises and I read him classic novels and I teach him the periodic table and the bones of the human body and how to make pancakes.’

‘In my dreams, you are always there too, Scully. Close by. Your presence makes everything whole. I can’t dream without you.’

She blinked back tears. ‘And you’re always in mine, Mulder. You’re the backbone, the rock, the tether. You hold it all together.’

‘Then let me be that for you now I’ll be here to hold it together. Always. Forgive yourself.’

‘Oh, Mulder,’ she said, her voice croaking. ‘I’m not ready yet. I’m just not ready.’

He rubbed her back through the towelling. ‘Okay. But when you are, I’ll be here.’

‘I know you will. You told me ’

‘Being the rock, the anchor, the glue?’

She chuffed. ‘No, just being the you that I need.’

‘Is that my super power? Being the right me for you?’

‘I think that’s more than a super power, Mulder. I think you deserve a sainthood, an altar for worshippers.’

‘Halos and deities aside, Scully. I want you to promise me that you will work towards forgiveness. William is out there and we have to believe that he is happy and safe. If we can’t give him that, we fail him.’

Nodding, she wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. She picked her coffee mug up and headed back to the couch. She sat down and put the mug on the table, lining it up with the coffee stain. ‘Where did you put the photo frames, Mulder?’

‘In the closet, in a box with your linen and your tea cup and a bottle of shampoo you never used and an earring I found on the floor of the bedroom and a pen you used to carry inside your suit jacket and two old lipstick tubes, Midnight Promise and Burnished Bronze, and an old wallet containing nearly thirty dollars and the pieces of you that you left behind.’

She gave him a tight, sad smile. ‘In my dreams our house is filled with photos of him, of us, of our family.’

‘I’ll get them out again, Scully. If that’s what you want.’

She shook her head. ‘This is your house now, Mulder. I can’t tell you what to do here.’

‘I’m just trying to be the right me for you, Scully.’

‘When you say it like that it sounds so needy, so precious. And that’s not what I meant.’

‘I’m teasing, Scully. But if there’s a way to bring you back here, I’m going to find it.’ He sucked in a deep breath. ‘I miss you. I miss you more now that I see you more often. I know that doesn’t make sense.’

‘It does. Believe me, it does. And I want nothing more than to walk back through that door for good. But I’m not the right me for you, Mulder. Not yet, anyway.’ She picked up the watch and smiled slowly at him. ‘I’ll get this fixed for you. Bring it back next week.’

It must have been the guttural roar of the wind through the trees that masked the sound of the car arriving. It must have been the flickering of the candles on the bench top that hid the flash of the headlights. It must have been the time of the day that left Mulder’s mind smudgy and billowing so that he didn’t register the knocking at the door.

It was 2 o’clock in the morning. A time when he often braved the depths of his memories, dug a trench around the black and white of the clear cut and allowed the murkiness to leach out to entertain the greyness of possibility. It was usually a time for reflection, a time for admonishment. A time for forgiveness.

And now it was a time that Scully called.


End file.
